


Name Of The Game

by Topaz_Eyes



Category: Lie to Me (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-22
Updated: 2010-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Vegas, Gillian had compared Poppy to roulette.  If she only knew where the real gamble lay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Name Of The Game

**Author's Note:**

> Refers to events from "Honey" to "Tractor Man." Thank you to [](http://lauriestein.livejournal.com/profile)[**lauriestein**](http://lauriestein.livejournal.com/), [](http://rothwoman.livejournal.com/profile)[**rothwoman**](http://rothwoman.livejournal.com/) and [](http://pellucid.livejournal.com/profile)[**pellucid**](http://pellucid.livejournal.com/) for previewing the first version!

In Vegas, Gillian had compared Poppy to roulette.

If she only knew where the real gamble lay.

For the longest time, Cal had likened his friendship with Gillian to emotional poker. He'd taught her well, so well that she came to eclipse him over the years, playing her cards so close to her chest that he could never know when to call her bluff. He often called her a terrible liar, right to her face, but God knew how many times he folded before she did: how often he confessed his secrets, vices and heartaches to her, laying himself bare while she rarely divulged the depth of her own.

Oh, he knew they ran deep, he'd glimpsed them a few times, though as hard as he tried she usually never let him close enough to divine their true extent. And because of that it hurt like hell sometimes, to know how unevenly her deck was stacked against him. But there it was, the line and the truth. Rules of the game and all that, and he had (more or less) willingly abided by them all these years.

Until the day Eric Matheson held a gun to his head.

Afterwards, the rules of their game changed, but Cal didn't fully understand how or why. Not until months later, as he stretched back in his chair with his feet up on his desk. The Lightman Group reigned victorious yet again. Just a couple hours earlier he'd bet everything on his certainty that there had been no bomb on that tractor. They deserved the celebration.

He twirled a glass of fire-amber liquid in his hand, and as he did, it was then that he finally recognized the truth. The rules themselves hadn't changed; the game had.

He wasn't playing emotional poker with Gillian anymore.

He was playing emotional roulette.

The events over the past few months clicked into place. He could rationalize rescuing Terry from the mob as paying off an old debt to a friend; he'd had no choice but to go to Afghanistan. But sleeping with Poppy had been a stretch, gambling his entire bonus in Vegas in front of Gillian had been worse, and if he were being honest with himself, did he really have to walk up to Harold in the tractor today?

(Then again it was, perhaps, always clearer in hindsight with a glass of rye. Or a dozen, as it were.)

Cal sipped his drink and watched Gillian over his tumbler. She sat on the couch across from him, shoulder-to-shoulder with Loker, both of them definitely tipsy. She ducked her head and giggled madly at something Loker said.

When she looked up again, he caught her gaze. Glassy to be sure, but there it was in her eyes, everything he'd always felt about her, for just an instant before her poker smile slipped back in place.

And the reason why the game had changed hit him like a sucker punch.

Because he wanted--God, how he wanted that embrace _back_.

On Gillian's doorstep late that night, after he'd been taken hostage in his own office, she'd held him tighter than anything, and all he wanted was that too-brief minute in her arms again. Surrounded by her warmth and love, everything laid bare between them, he'd felt certain for the first time that he could be--_was_\--the most important person in her world. Her ideal man.

He wanted that moment back, and he wanted it for the rest of his life. He'd fucking do anything for it, and playing poker just didn't cut it anymore. She was too bloody good at it.

Roulette had worked once with Gillian already. It could work again, he was sure.

So now that he knew what his new game with Gillian was, he knew he had no choice but to keep up with it. He wasn't sure if she knew the game had changed, but it didn't matter. As long as it took, he'd place everything on double zero until she broke, or he did, or they broke together. Maybe then they could have that moment back again.

He might just bet his life on it.


End file.
